Anti-Money Laundering Guidance in 2017

2017 is a busy year for those involved in Anti-Money Laundering supervision, both for those providing the guidance and for those implementing it. 

HM Treasury (HMT) has announced that in future its intention is to only approve one piece of AML guidance per sector. This means that the guidance currently provided by CILEx (although not formally approved by HMT) will be replaced by a single piece of guidance that applies to all professionals across the legal sector in the UK. It is likely that this guidance with be based on the current Law Society HMT approved guidance.

With the fourth Money Laundering Directive coming in to force very soon on 26 June 2017, this means that with the number of supervisors involved there needs to be some compromises on how this is achieved.

The first priority is obviously compliance with the regulations and ensuring you have appropriate guidance with all the required changes. This may mean that there will be some stylistic changes that have to be made at a later date. However, we are supportive of this approach and will be contributing to the discussions on making sure it works for our CILEx members and CILEx businesses.

The intention of all legal sector AML supervisors is to have the guidance ready and HMT-approved ahead of the commencement of the new regulations. We will advise you as soon as this is available.

This will be first of a number of messages we will be sending out, so please keep an eye out for the next installment!  If you want to receive alerts then please follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.